NSW: No penalty for son who helped mum dispose of body parts
By Margaret Scheikowski17 Apr 2009 5:58 PM
SYDNEY, April 17 AAP - For more than 15 years, Jamie Chant believed he was the reason his mother shot dead his violent father before hacking off his arms, legs and head.
The 36-year-old sobbed as he told Justice Roderick Howie: "I had to live with that for all these years".
"They were fighting about me, because of the trouble I was in, that is what she always made me believe", he said.
Chant gave the evidence last month in the NSW Supreme Court, but it could not be reported then as his mother, Joyce Mary Chant, was facing trial for murder.
He told the judge he would give evidence against his mother, after pleading guilty to concealing a serious crime and to improperly interfering with human remains.
On Friday, Justice Howie convicted Chant on the two charges but imposed no penalty on the distraught man.
Earlier this week, his 57-year-old mother pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Wayne Robert Chant, 47, at their Revesby home in September 1992.
She was facing a murder retrial, after a jury could not reach a verdict and the crown accepted her plea to the lesser offence on the grounds of provocation.
According to the agreed facts, her violent husband had threatened her with his rifle causing her to fear for her life.
When he dropped it, she picked it up and shot him in the head, before later dismembering his body and dumping the parts in various locations throughout NSW.
Her son was in a juvenile detention centre at the time of the shooting and on his release became suspicious of her claim that his father had abandoned them.
When challenged, she referred to a news report about a human torso being found at Kiama, adding: "That was your Dad".
He said she told him his father's head and hands were out the back in an esky and a container full of cement.
The human remains charge relates to his carrying the container out to the car, before they drove off and she dumped it and the esky.
Last month, Chant was asked why he had not gone to police when he found out what happened to his father.
"I was more scared of her than I was of the police," he said.
Chant, who uses a walking stick, told the judge he was knocked off his motorcycle in late 2007.
He told the jury at his mother's murder trial of the violence they both had suffered at the hands of his father.
"Dad used to backhand her, closed fist, punch her in the back, push her over, hit her across the face, things you do not do to someone you love," he said.
His nose had been broken by his father, who had begun to drink more and lose his temper more after being in an accident in the year before his death.
Sentencing submissions for Joyce Chant will be held on June 5.
